Soon after the death of his first wife in 1887, Bartholom' embarked on the chief work of his career: from 1889 to 1899 he worked on the stone Monument to the Dead in P're Lachaise cemetery, Paris, which, together with Rodin's Gates of Hell, is one of the greatest expressions of Symbolist sculpture. This large stone sculpture in high relief, with its harmonious rhythms, its lyrical interlinking of figures and its sober modelling expresses in sculpture an ideal of refined restraint close to that of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.